Explicit Representation of Cost-Efficient Strategies

In this paper, we give an explicit representation of the lowest cost strategy to achieve a given payoff distribution (that we call “cost-efficient” strategy). For any inefficient strategy, we are able to construct financial derivatives which dominate in the sense of first-order or second-order stochastic dominance. We highlight the connections between cost-efficiency and dependence. This allows us to extend the theory to deal with state-dependent constraints to better reflect real-world preferences. We show in particular that path-dependent strategies (although inefficient in the Black Scholes setting) may become optimal in the presence of state-dependent constraints.